Getting Started with UDK

Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is a free but powerful game engine – ideal for hobbyists – and this tutorial is all you need to get started. Includes a walkthrough in building your own tower defense game.

Getting Started with UDK

Starting

John P. DoranJuly 2013

Unreal Development Kit (UDK) is a free but powerful game engine – ideal for hobbyists – and this tutorial is all you need to get started. Includes a walkthrough in building your own tower defense game.

Book Details

About This Book

Learn how to greybox your level by building basic shapes and reshaping the environment

Use the visual scripting tool Kismet to create all of the gameplay for your project, from spawning waves of enemies to building placeable towers

Develop a thorough understanding of how to use the industry standard Scaleform to create a custom HUD and Main Menu screen to make a game your own

Who This Book Is For

If you have ever had the urge to know more about how all those amazing games you played for countless hours are created, then this book is definitely for you! This step-by-step tutorial will teach you how to create a complete game within UDK.

Even if you have no prior experience of UDK, you can still start building the games you want today.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Augmenting the UDK

What we will achieve

Before we begin

Block out simple-level geometry

Using a third-person perspective

Summary

Chapter 2: Tower Defense

Spawning enemies

Enemies damaging the base

Creating/Spawning a single tower

Multiple towers made easy – prefabs

Summary

Chapter 3: Detailing Environments

Applying materials

Placing staircases

Adding in-level boundaries

Spawning weapons

Objective complete

Summary

Chapter 4: Finishing Touches

Obtaining Flash

Creating our main menu

Creating our HUD

Creating the main menu into UDK

Cooking and packaging our game

Taking the project to the next level

Summary

What You Will Learn

Learn tips and tricks to achieve what every gamer dreams about – their very own gaming environment

Create gameplay functionality such as enemy wave spawning and placeable towers using Kismet

Use Geometry Mode to greybox environments

Build multiple towers making use of Prefabs

Design visually stunning environments making use of materials and static meshes.

Place power-ups in your environment, such as weapons and health

Communicate between Flash to UDK and vice-versa through Kismet

In Detail

UDK, the free version of the popular and award-winning Unreal 3 Engine, is an amazing and powerful tool to use for projects of any kind. You can use it to create high-quality games and make your dream games a reality.

UDK can be a little intimidating based on the level of games it has contributed to the ever growing and ever exciting world of gaming. Overcome all your apprehensions with this step-by-step guide and build a complete project within the Unreal Development Kit with unique gameplay, custom menus, and a triple A rated finish

This book will help you create a custom tower defense game within UDK, even if you have absolutely no prior knowledge of UDK game development.

In next to no time, you will learn how to create any kind of environment within UDK. With your basic environment created, you will make use of simple visual scripting to create a tower defense game complete with enemies attacking in waves. We then finish off the game with custom menus and a Heads Up Display. The final step is to release your game into the wild and give others the excitement of playing it.

Authors

John P. Doran

John P. Doran is a technical game designer who has been creating games for over 10 years. He has worked on an assortment of games in teams from just himself to over 70 in student, mod, and professional projects.

He previously worked at LucasArts on Star Wars: 1313 as a game design intern. He later graduated from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, with a Bachelor of Science in Game Design.

John is currently a part of DigiPen’s Research and Development branch in Singapore. He is also the lead instructor of the DigiPen-Ubisoft Campus Game Programming Program, instructing graduate level students in an intensive, advanced level game programming curriculum. In addition to that, he also tutors and assists students on various subjects while giving lectures on C#, C++, Unreal, Unity, game design, and more.

He is the author of Unity Game Development Blueprints, Getting Started with UDK, UDK Game Development, Mastering UDK Game Development, and co-wrote UDK iOS Game Development Beginner's Guide, all available from Packt Publishing. More information about him can be found on his website.

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